The judges of the Constitutional Court rejected this Thursday the appeal presented on Monday by Chega regarding the ruling that determines the recount of votes in a section of São Domingos de Benfica, in Lisbon, considering it “legally inadmissible”.
“This is, therefore, a legally inadmissible appeal, which is why it was decided not to take cognizance of it”, the judges of the Constitutional Court (TC) agreed, in plenary, in response to the Chega party’s appeal.
At issue are the results of the election for the Lisbon City Council of local authorities on October 12th, in which the TC ordered, on Friday, the “recount of votes from polling station no. which had been attributed to Chega.
Faced with this TC decision, which was produced following an appeal filed by the CDU, the Chega party filed an appeal for not agreeing with this ruling, in particular the validation of a null vote in favor of the CDU, considering that “it is complementary wrong and reveals a certain partiality”.
According to the judges at Palácio Ratton, Chega’s case is based on the “contradiction of rulings of the learned court” and the violation of the electoral law of local authority bodies, claiming that the decision to validate a null vote for the CDU “violates decisions and principles previously established by the Constitutional Court itself”.
Chega also justified the presentation of this appeal “for the standardization of jurisprudence which, if not accepted, would be rooted in unconstitutionality, because it would violate the right to effective judicial protection since the application of the law would not be uniform”, alleging a difference in interpretation of the law compared to that which was followed in previous TC decisions on different specific cases.
Based on this reasoning, the far-right party asked for “the decision contained in the minutes of the general tabulation assembly to be annulled and reinstituted”.
In response, the TC decided on Monday to notify the representatives of political parties, coalitions and groups of citizens involved in the election “to, if they wish, respond to the appeal filed by the Chega party within one day”, with only the CDU responding, “ruling the rejection of the appeal, due to legal inadmissibility, and, alternatively, its unfoundedness”.
In the ruling produced today, the judges decided that the extraordinary appeal for standardization of jurisprudence, which constitutes “a way of triggering a ruling by all judges in the full section when a section departs from what was previously decided”, is a “manifestly unfounded” claim.
This is because, according to the TC, the ruling that validates a null vote in favor of the CDU “was taken by the plenary of the Constitutional Court, which includes all the judges that compose it”, so an appeal of the decision to the same college (which already brings together all the TC judges) “not only does not meet the legal requirements” of the Code of Civil Procedure regarding the basis of the appeal “but also lacks a material basis”.
In the election for the Lisbon City Council, Chega began to be ahead of the CDU by a difference of 11 votes, according to the provisional results on the day of the election, October 12th. Days later, the local tabulation assembly indicated that the difference had been reduced to three votes. However, following the ruling of the Constitutional Court, Chega’s advantage over the CDU was reduced to just one vote.
The difference in votes between Chega and CDU is relevant regarding the election of councilors in the Lisbon City Council, with whoever is ahead winning two mandates, while the other only gets one. If it is confirmed that Chega was the third most voted candidate, after PSD/CDS-PP/IL and PS/Livre/BE/PAN, the CDU loses a communist councilor in the capital, compared to the two elected in 2021.
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